Recently I put together a quick proposal for a prospective client, who has been maintaining an online newsletter for 2 or 3 years now, and is feeling burned out by the burden of constantly producing new content for her newsletter. Here are some simple approaches I shared with her:
1. Develop an editorial calendar. This is one of the most under-appreciated – and valuable – strategies you can employ. An editorial calendar gives you a foundation so you’re not always scrambling to create or re-create marketing materials.
2. Create a schedule that you can live with. Find the right balance between continuously communicating to your clients and prospects – and feeling burned out.
3. Generally, focus on one – and only one – key idea in each newsletter. Having one fresh idea per newsletter gives your readers a reason to open the email.
4. Develop a consistent look and feel that supports your strategy. In this case, the format of her newsletters required a large amount of content to fill it out. I suggested revising the format to focus (as mentioned in #3) on one key idea with each newsletter. Keep it short and sweet. Design a format to support that.
5. Use the funnel approach in your newsletters. In her case, sales heat up at the end of the year. During the early summer, she could offer topics of a more general interest (with a “soft” call to action). During September and October, she could move into a more sales-oriented approach. In November and December, she could ratchet up the pressure through her choice of topics and language, emphasizing the call to action.
6. Offer unrelated content from time to time. Instead of always talking sales and marketing, every once in a while give your readers something amusing, a little surprise that they can enjoy during a coffee break. That gives them a reason to look forward to your newsletters.
These are only a handful of strategies; used effectively, they can help you maintain both a healthy newsletter program and your sanity.